"I was going in that way," Mary broke in. "He would have caught me, and I would have had to tell the truth. He mustn't know the boys are here. The truth is, I am a little bit more afraid of him than I was. He—he holds everything over me that he finds out. He talks about our marrying more than he did. I can get in by the back stairs, and I'll go up very soon. Don't wait, Mr. Brown. He is sure to lie awake till you return. Lock the door after you. Don't remove your shoes this time. Show him that you don't care what he thinks."
Charles found the way clear for him on his return, and as he passed Frazier's room he noticed that the door was closed; he heard no sounds within.
"Show him that you don't care what he thinks!" Mary's last words were ringing in his ears. Somehow they were the sweetest words he had ever heard. They warmed, thrilled, encouraged him. He took them to sleep with him. They followed him through strange turbulent dreams that night. They were back of his first waking thoughts the next morning. "Show him that you don't care what he thinks!" He could have sung the words to the accompaniment of the rising sunlight as it bathed the fields in yellow. With them she had thanked him for the service he had rendered, and the service had been her protection against that particular individual. Marry him? Could she marry a man she feared? And yet she had said she would under certain conditions, and the conditions were on the way to fulfilment. Great God! how could it be? His short-lived hope was gone; the music of her magic words had ceased. He heard the clatter of Frazier's boots in his bed-chamber. As he passed down the steps, he heard the burly guest emptying soiled water from his wash-bowl out of a window upon the shrubbery below. How he hated the man!
CHAPTER XVI
A few days later Mary left on horseback immediately after breakfast. From Rowland, Charles learned that she was going to see certain persons who owned near-by farms, with the hope of borrowing money for the removal of the wounded man to Atlanta and for his treatment there by the famous surgeon, Doctor Elliot.
Charles was at work, hoeing corn, when from the thicket bordering the field Kenneth and Martin stealthily emerged and joined him, having crept around from the barn.
"It is all right," Kenneth said, with an assuring smile. "Nobody is in sight on the road for a mile either way. We can dodge back any minute at the slightest sound. It's hell, Brown, to stay there like a pig being fattened for the killing. This is monotonous, I tell you. I can't stand it very long. That man must get to Atlanta. Mary is off this morning to borrow cash for it. Our credit is gone. Nobody will indorse for the old man but Albert Frazier, and I think his name is none too good here lately."
"He will get the money for sister, see if he doesn't," Martin spoke up, plaintively. "She is trying to keep him from it, though; that's why she went off this morning. She doesn't care for him—she doesn't—she doesn't! She knows what he is. She couldn't love a man like that. I hate him. He claims to be helping us, and he is, I reckon, but he has an object in view, and I'd die rather than have him gain it."
"No, I don't want her to marry him, either." Kenneth's voice had a touch of genuine manliness in it which Charles noticed for the first time. Moreover, his face was very grave. He shrugged his shoulders and flushed slightly as he went on. "I've been watching you, Brown. Having nothing else to do all day long, I've watched you at your work and seen you come and go from the field to the house and back. I envy you. To tell you the God's truth, I'm sick and tired of the way I've been living. They say I am responsible for Martin being in this mess, too. I reckon I am, and I know I am the cause of sister's worry and the disgrace of all this on the family. They say an honest confession is good for the soul, and I say to you that if this damned thing passes over I'm going to take a different course. I see the pleasure you get out of working, and I am going to work. The other thing is not what it is cracked up to be."